Dream d3046-s: The Unfiled Seam

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the table was set at the far end of the Slatemoss hall, a slab of grey-green slate on two iron trestles, and the ledger lay open at the first blank page past the surveyed sheet. I sat with the lamp behind me and the quill in hand, and Lano curled at the foot of the table, watching the door with her ears half-raised.

The Horizon-Surveyor had brought in the measurements that afternoon - distances from the sheet's edge, bearings taken at the ironwork posts where the old census had stopped. The Relic-Watcher set the folded papers beside the inkwell without speaking, and I began copying the numbers down in order, line by line.

The Tally-Reader stood behind me and read the count aloud as each entry landed: one, two, three. She did not round any figure. Where the measurement ended in a fraction she said the fraction.

Rurik came in from the passage and leapt to the far corner of the table, settling with his front paws tucked. He watched the quill move. He did not watch me.

The first entry was a ruin of pale blocks, no foundation visible from any angle the Surveyor had taken. Depth unknown. The pale cyan seam ran along its eastern face, and the Anomaly-Hand had marked its width at the top and the bottom, neither measurement matching the other. I wrote both. I did not reconcile them.

The Warden of the Deep Stratum said nothing the whole time, which is her office. She stood near the wall. Lano lifted her nose once when the Warden shifted weight, then set her chin back on her paws.

By the time the hall was fully dark the first entry was complete: location, dimensions, the cyan seam's two widths, and the note that it had not appeared on the old sheet. No explanation. The ledger does not carry explanations.

Rurik blinked once at the finished page, slow, amber.

I closed the ledger and left the candle burning for whoever came to read it next.

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